How Men and Women Die Differently (2024)
Men die years younger than women and far more often by suicide, homicide, accident, and overdose. The external-cause gap, quantified.
Key findings
- Men and women die differently, starting with age: in 2024 men died at a median age of 74, 6 years younger than women at 80.
- Men's deaths are far more likely to be violent or external. Suicide was the manner of 2.4% of male deaths versus 0.7% of female deaths, about 3.6 times the rate.
- Homicide shows the widest gap: 1.1% of male deaths versus 0.3%, roughly 3.7 times as often.
- Accidents (8.4% vs 4.8%) and drug overdose (3.5% vs 1.7%) follow the same pattern, which is a big part of why men's median age at death is lower.
The gap between how men and women die is one of the most consistent patterns in mortality. This compares every 2024 male and female death on two things: the median age at death and the share that came from external causes (suicide, homicide, accident, and drug overdose). Men die younger and far more often by violence and injury, while women's deaths skew older and toward natural causes. These are exact counts from the near-census of death records.
Men vs women, 2024
Share of deaths by external manner
| Category | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Suicide | 2.44% | 0.67% |
| Homicide | 1.07% | 0.29% |
| Accident | 8.43% | 4.76% |
| Drug overdose | 3.5% | 1.66% |
By sex
| Metric | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Deaths | 1,606,321 | 1,476,143 |
| Median age at death | 74 | 80 |
| Suicide (% of deaths) | 2.4% | 0.7% |
| Homicide (% of deaths) | 1.1% | 0.3% |
| Accident (% of deaths) | 8.4% | 4.8% |
| Drug overdose (% of deaths) | 3.5% | 1.7% |
Shares are within each sex. Overdose is ICD-10 X40 to X44, X60 to X64, Y10 to Y14. Exact counts; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
CDC/NCHS Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Public Use File
- Vintage:
- 2024
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
A near-census of U.S. death records for the year, drawn from death certificates and coded to ICD-10. Each row is one death, with the underlying cause and all contributing (multiple) causes, age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, month and day of death, place and manner of death (natural, accident, suicide, homicide), marital status, education, autopsy, and disposition. It supports analysis of what Americans die of and how that varies by age and demographics.
Every U.S. death is registered on a death certificate, which NCHS compiles, codes to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), and releases as an annual public-use micro-file. Each record carries one underlying cause plus all contributing causes.
The file covers essentially all registered deaths in the data year, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect confidentiality, the public-use file omits state and county of residence and occurrence. Analyses here are national and demographic (by cause, age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, month, manner, and place of death). State-level figures require CDC WONDER or the restricted-use file.
Causes follow ICD-10. Alongside the underlying cause, NCHS provides standard recodes (358, 113, and 39 groups) used in its publications, and the full list of entity-axis and record-axis contributing conditions.
- The public-use file has no state or county geography, so it cannot be mapped sub-nationally.
- Cause of death depends on how certifiers complete death certificates; coding conventions and ill-defined ("garbage") codes affect some categories.
- The final annual file lags roughly a year behind the data year; provisional counts (via CDC WONDER) are more timely but less detailed.
- Age is reported in several recodes; very fine demographic cross-tabulations can be thin for rare causes.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative near-census (exact counts)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2024 Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death Public Use File. Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-24.